VERDY and Paulo Calle are bringing a long-running creative friendship back to its starting point with In Good Company, a new group exhibition at GYRE Gallery in Tokyo. The show marks VERDY’s first group exhibition and features Calle as curator, bringing together 14 artists from Japan and abroad.
The collaboration follows the pair’s first meeting in Tokyo in 2015. Since then, the Japanese artist and designer and the stateside creative director have worked together while developing their respective creative worlds, including Girls Don’t Cry and Wasted Youth.
A Show Built Around Creative Resonance
Rather than following a single curatorial theme, In Good Company focuses on the artists and works that have influenced VERDY. Consequently, the exhibition takes a personal approach to contemporary art, emphasizing shared interests, creative connections and the experience of encountering work that feels familiar.
The selection spans painting, ceramics, photography and abstract art. Zoé Blue M. presents a painting duet, following recent attention around her playful Little Table Tokyo Tennis x ASICS mascots. Meanwhile, Alake Shilling and Diana Yesenia Alvarado contribute ceramic animal sculptures that combine playful forms with a mischievous sensibility.
Reginald Sylvester II also features in the exhibition with an abstract canvas. His inclusion carries a particular significance, as he was the artist who originally introduced VERDY and Calle.
VERDY himself is also represented, placing his work within the broader network of artists who have shaped his creative perspective. As a result, the exhibition functions less as a conventional survey and more as a portrait of artistic relationships.
The gallery describes the exhibition as beginning with “a sense of feeling and resonance,” centered on the comfort, familiarity, emotion and creative inspiration these artists and their work have brought to the artists’ lives.
An International Circle in Tokyo
The exhibition brings together an international group whose practices span distinct disciplines and visual languages. Featured artists include Aijani Payne, Alake Shilling, Cam Hicks, Coco Capitán, Devin B. Johnson, Diana Yesenia Alvarado, Jan Gatewood, Jaynard Caparoso, Keita Shirayama, Raina Lee, Reginald Sylvester II, Shaniqwa Jarvis, VERDY and Zoé Blue M.
Rather than imposing a unified aesthetic, In Good Company allows those individual practices to coexist. In turn, that approach reflects the exhibition’s central premise: creative communities can form through influence, friendship and shared resonance rather than a fixed artistic movement.
In Good Company is now on view at GYRE Gallery in Shibuya through September 27.
GYRE GALLERY
3F, 5-10-1 Jingumae,
Shibuya, Tokyo
150-0001
